Azuki NFT
Take the Red Bean
Key Takeaways:
Azuki – a Japanese anime themed NFT project shot up to popularity upon release in Jan 2022, with its sales volume topping 12,054 ETH (approx. USD 32 million) on 1 Feb. Average sales price of Azuki NFT has since increased from 1.9119 ETH (12 Jan) to 12.5163 ETH (11 Feb), clocking a 554.65% gain.
This article covers the overall introduction of Azuki, rare traits and features of Azuki, plus upcoming highlights and developments for the project.
About Azuki
Azuki is a Japanese anime themed PFP NFT project that started with 10,000 uniquely designed avatars built on Ethereum blockchain, with the aim of becoming a brand for the metaverse. Azuki NFT holders are granted membership access to The Garden, where exclusive drops, live events, and experiences will be revealed.
The team behind this project is based in Los Angeles (LA), California with a mix of backgrounds in crypto, technology and gaming. Steamboy is the lead artist and he was the Overwatch Character Art Director before joining Azuki full time. Joo, who was an artist of Street Fighter Comic and GenghisKwan are the other two artists named in Azuki team.
How it Started
The Azukis were initially released as 10,000 Red Beans which later evolved into full characters on 20 Jan 2022. All Azukis have been fully minted and can be purchased from Opensea.
Azuki Traits
There are 4 different types of Azuki, namely Human (9018), Blue (444), Red (441) and Spirit (97). Each Azuki is also characterized differently by various types of clothing, headgear, offhand, hair, eyes, neck, mouth, face and ear, with variety of background designs. You may visit Azuki Gallery for a complete exhibition of all Azukis.
The Rare Ones
Some of the rare traits and features of the Azukis are listed below:
Rare Clothing: Golden kigurumi series is one of the rarest due to its scarcity in quantity, with only 5 Azukis spotted wearing the Golden Cat Kigurumi.
Rare Hairstyle: Most of the rare hairstyles are coming from Spirit Azuki type, such as Spirit long (12), Spirit bob (12), Spirit ponytail (15), Spirit fluffy (15) and Spirit goddess (20).
Rare Offhand: All Rare offhand are coming from Golden offhand series, such as Golden Zanbato (11), Golden sheathed katana (12), Golden monkey king staff (12) and Golden katana (12).
Rare features: There are also other rare features such as red bean earring (14) and blue bean earring (16) spotted on Azukis. Other rare features include lightning eyes, fire eyes, glowing eyes, golden headphones, red panda beanie, heart eye patch and lipstick kiss.
Hidden Combos:
There are 4 hidden combos where the Azukis have matching animal traits in their headband, earring, headphone, and clothing. These combos are: Red panda, Blue cat, Brown sloth and Green frog.
Upcoming Highlights and Developments:
There are no confirmed dates yet, but Azuki team is currently working on launching streetwear drops for members of The Garden. Members-only community events such as meet-ups, exhibits and music festivals are also in progress. Some notable developments by Azuki team include developing meta-games, integrating immersive 3D experiences (Sandbox VR, Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, Somnium Space) and launching $BEAN cryptocurrency for Azuki-verse.
An Experiment on Decentralized IP (Intellectual Property) Governance – The Bobu Fractionalization
Azuki team recently announced an experiment to carry out a decentralized IP governance. How? By locking an Azuki #40 character named Bobu into a decentralized smart contract called the Vault. The Vault will then distribute “transfer and sell” decision power into Fractions (ERC-1155 tokens). These Fractions can be purchased by anyone who wish to participate in the governance of Bobu’s character. Thus, the Bobu Fractionalization.
Some examples of things that Bobu Fractions community can vote on:
Should something be part of Bobu's origin story in his lore?
Should the ETH from the Bobu sale be used to make Bobu merch for all Fraction holders?
Should the Bobu treasury be used to fund an animated short featuring Bobu and other Azukis?
Should we make Bobu's Coffee Beans? Should we hire an actor to play Bobu in a commercial for said beans?
However, Azuki team clarifies that owning a Bobu Fraction does not mean owning a fraction of Bobu NFT. It simply means Bobu Fraction holders are holding governance rights of the Vault that contains Bobu NFT. This is a unique way of distributing IP governance rights, which has not been done before in Web 3. With this experiment, Azuki team’s goal is to ultimately achieve decentralized IP governance, by providing governance utility to holders from the start. According to Azuki team, Bobu is the first of many more experiments to come.
As such this sums up our brief coverage on Azuki. To learn more, do visit Azuki’s official website and follow their social media outlets for latest updates.
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